For many menopausal women, hot flashes are the bane of their existence. While there’s more to the experience of menopause than hot flashes, they’ve become the most recognizable sound-bite to sum up what most women find so unpleasant. There are a number of pharmaceutical options out there for addressing hot flashes, but little by little scientific research is coming out with some mind-body medicine alternatives to ease this menopausal journey. The International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis recently published a study by Gary Elkins, PhD et al. from Baylor University. Their focus: whether the use of “cool” imagery during…

Not all fat is the same. All of us have heard about the difference between saturated fats and unrefined vegetable fats. But it isn’t as often that we talk about the health differences in body fats. Visceral, or intra-abdominal fat, is located deep under the muscle tissue in the abdominal cavity and has been linked to numerous health problems, especially heart disease. This same fat is again in the scientific press, now as the subject of a new paper published in the scientific journal Bone. Miriam A. Bredella, M.D. led a team of radiologists at Massachusetts General Hospital who looked…

When I’ve spoken with people who were trying to get pregnant, one common problem they all mentioned was the staggering amount of inconsistent information about how to increase their chances of getting pregnant.

The truth is, there are a lot of unanswered fertility questions still waiting for the scientific community to tackle.

But on the other hand, we’ve come a long way in obtaining fertility for couples who a generation ago would have never been able to have biological children.

Every ten years, an interagency working group within the US government develops health goals for the country to work toward. First, the good news: The number of women in the nation receiving mammograms, the number being screened for colorectal cancer, and the number that had annual dental exams met or exceeded national goals for 2010. But sadly, other than that, women in the USA are not keeping up in making progress toward health improvement. In fact, in the other 23 target areas, most states and the country overall failed miserably. The National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) provided report cards periodically…

This is good news, but let’s look at why it happened. Breast cancer rates dropped with the decreased use of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). And the decreased use of HRT came after the 2002 publishing of the Women’s Health Initiative’s report, which linked the use of HRT to increased breast cancer. Since that time, evidence substantiating the concerns expressed in the 2002 report have been pouring in. A recent study out of the University of California at San Francisco, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, is the first to show a direct link between reduced hormone therapy and declines…